Making sense of NTR

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

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Telugu journalists have had an ambivalent attitude towards matinee idol-turned-unorthodox politician NT Rama Rao. They liked him as an actor but they were not so sure whether he was a politician who made sense. They were uncomfortable with Rama Rao in this role. He appeared whimsical. His anti-Congress zeal and ire impressed them as well as amused them. However, they could not dismiss him as a political leader because he won three elections with a massive majority in 1983, 1985 and 1994. And yet he had lost in 1989.

The attempt has been to explain his political success in terms of his star charisma, especially through the roles of gods he played: Venkateswara, Rama, Krishna. But the inference that his silver screen glamour won him the political crown does not hold. The experience of Chiranjeevi, another matinee idol, shows that a popular film star does not automatically become an acceptable politician. There is need for political passion and Rama Rao had it. But the cynical Telugu intelligentsia thinks that his political passion was like the passionate dialogues he delivered on screen.

Veteran journalist Ramachandra Murthy Kondubhatla grapples with the problems of writing about Rama Rao, explaining his success for the short period he was the domineering figure in Andhra Pradesh politics. Kondubhatla bares the dilemma of the man tasked with writing about Rama Rao: “Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (NTR) had always fascinated me. He was not just a popular film star who launched a political party to rout the Congress, which until then had no rival in Andhra Pradesh… There was no politician like NTR the way he thought, expressed his views, made unpredictable decisions and lived a life full of contradictions… He was handsome, expressive and ebullient. He was a narcissist who loved himself.”

In the telling of the story, Kondubhatla has fallen back on the biographies and narratives written by many people, including Rama Rao’s second wife, Lakshmi Parvathi, his elder son-in-law Daggubati Venkateswara Rao, journalists and the memoirs of PC Alexander, who was principal secretary to Indira Gandhi. He also falls back on his journalistic access to various events from the period to reconstruct the Rama Rao story. And there are times when he seems to make his own assessment of things when he attributes a greater role to Telugu newspaper baron Ramoji Rao, editor of the mass circulation daily Eanadu, in paving the way for Rama Rao the politician. He projects the impression that it was Ramoji Rao who helped promote Rama Rao’s image across the state and that the Eanadu staff were in service of Rama Rao. That makes Ramoji Rao the pivot of Rama Rao’s political takeoff, which is not the case.

There is an unmistakable tragic dimension to the life and personality of Rama Rao, and not many people writing about him want to pay much attention to it. They adore Rama Rao and want to claim him as a hero of Telugu politics, but they cannot bring themselves to admit that here is a populist leader with a simplistic vision of bringing prosperity to people. The simple political faith of the man is treated with unconcealed contempt because they believe that politics is all about stratagems and Rama Rao was a bad player because he was not adept at these moves.

One of the most honest acts of his political life was when he announced at a public meeting that he would marry Lakshmi Parvathi because she attended to him when he was not well, when he was abandoned by his family. That showed the guileless man that Rama Rao was. The worldly-wise Telugu journalists feel he was an incompetent human being. There is a trace of that condescending journalist in Kondubhatla’s narrative too. Of course, he has the right to adopt the stance that he believes in.

Rama Rao still awaits a biographer who understands him as a simple man from a peasant background sticking to the simple values of family life.